After FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl’s appearance at the ORF ‘summer talks’ on Monday, there was criticism from the governing parties ÖVP and Greens: ‘Herbert Kickl is the biggest threat to Austria’s security,’ said ÖVP Secretary General Christian Stocker Tuesday. Apparently, Kickl has a problem with the police and the Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution, who protect democracy from extreme currents.
“It is clear that the blue chairman has become so radicalized that he no longer sees the identities as the danger they actually pose,” Stocker summarized in a broadcast.
Green vice-club president and general secretary Olga Voglauer also sharply criticized Kickl in a broadcast: “The political views of Herbert Kickl and the FPÖ are extremely dangerous for Austria.”
Voglauer sees FPÖ “cuddle course” with identities
Voglauer also sees ‘a continuation of the friendly course of the Freedom Party’ with the Identitarian Movement and in Kickl’s statements ‘a scandalous trivialization of the right-wing extremist and anti-democratic group, which is rightly under the supervision of the Bureau for the Rights of the Man. Protection of the Constitution”.
In the ‘summer talks’, the FPÖ leader compared the identities with other NGOs such as Greenpeace or Global 2000, whose projects would also be supported in individual cases. The motto of the ÖVP, however, is above all: ‘If the citizen feels uncomfortable, brand him as a right-wing extremist.’ The protection of the constitution must protect the constitution and not the ‘left-wing pseudo-morality’.
The 2017 Constitutional Protection Report, published under then Interior Minister Kickl, stated that the identitarian movement was “currently one of the main carriers of modernized right-wing extremism.” The ‘right-wing extremist ideology’ thus acquired a new, youthful and modern appearance, ‘in which the classic right-wing extremist interpretations and argumentation patterns are skilfully hidden’, according to the then constitutional protection report.
Wöginger: ‘Kickl collected 224,000 euros’
In addition, ÖVP club president August Wöginger criticized the FPÖ leader in a press release for being absent from 23 National Council meetings. “When you are as rarely involved in the National Council as Herbert Kickl is, I wonder how honest he really is about his commitment to the people of this country.” After all, Kickl collected 224,000 euros.
Wöginger accused the president of the FPÖ club of ignorance because he wanted to sell the law on nursing education, which had already been passed by the government, as a “free package”.
FPÖ general fires back
FPÖ Secretary General Michael Schnedlitz promptly responded to the criticism: “The ÖVP’s now chronic need to write off liberal ideas and proposals and then sell them as their own innovations is becoming increasingly embarrassing and grotesque. We liberals have been demanding nursing education for at least sixteen years, and not just as a pilot project, as the ÖVP had planned.”
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
